157: Paul Cooper: Embracing Your Emotions & Self Actualization

At a young age, Paul lost his father in a tragic car accident and witnessed his mother and two brothers suffer severe injuries. Growing up, he faced a severe crisis of identity and struggled to understand who he was and how to interact with the world.

After a failed marriage and years of self discovery, Paul came to grips with who he was and what his place is in the universe. Along the way he discovered many powerful lessons and has created a coaching program to help other men facing similar issues.

Favorite Success Quote

““Time to cash in your chips
put your ideas and beliefs on the table.
See who has the bigger hand
you or the Mystery that pervades you.Time to scrape the mind’s shit
off your shoes
undo the laces
that hold your prison together
and dangle your toes into emptiness.Once you’ve put everything
on the table
once all of your currency is gone
and your pockets are full of air
all you’ve got left to gamble with
is yourself.Go ahead, climb up onto the velvet top
of the highest stakes table.
Place yourself as the bet.
Look God in the eyes
and finally
for once in your life
lose “~Adayashanti

Key Points

1. Learn to Accept the Pain You Are In

So often we try and ignore the pain we are feeling, we try and push it away, to hide it. In the end, all this does is cause the pain to bottle up and eventually resurface worse than ever.

Learn to accept how you are feeling in the here and now. Accept your pain, don’t run from it or try and hide it. Feel it, live through it, and become stronger because of it.

2. Never Do Something for Money that You Won’t Do for Free

Life is too damn short to have a dichotomy between what you enjoy and how you make your living. If you don’t enjoy something, never do it for money, period.

Find a way to make your passion your career. Innovate and create a job where you can do the things you love, because at the end of the day all that matters is the impact you made and the joy you had, not your wallet.

3. Take Responsibility

You are where you are in life because of you. No one else. It is not your dads fault, your teachers fault, the governments fault or societies fault, the results you have in your life are your fault and yours alone.

Accept that you are the only one responsible for your life, and you empower yourself to change it, allow others to control your life by making excuses and you will see your life forever run by the whims of others.

4. Be Authentic

Be yourself, be who you want, do not fear what other people think. We live in a world full of people being inauthentic to make others happy, so being authentic will naturally make you some enemies.

Don’t be afraid of this. Be yourself and be who you want to be and you will live a life full of joy and purpose, haters be damned. Be yourself and, when you finally die, you can die knowing that you lived life on your terms, as the man you wanted to be.